Project Safeways, a pilot project begun in 2007 to make apartment complexes safer, is expanding into a stand-alone nonprofit agency through a $450,000 grant from the Plough Foundation.

The project, which began with two properties owned by the LEDIC Management Group, has reduced crimes by 30-80 percent in different categories, said Scott ‘Pierce' Ledbetter Jr., president and CEO of LEDIC. Two of his apartment complexes, Autumn Ridge in Hickory Hill and Kensington Manor in Parkway Village, were part of the pilot program that Ledbetter said he would like to see expanded to apartments across the city.

He said two other management groups, ALCO and MRG, have pledged to join the next phase of the project.

At the University of Memphis, Phyllis Betts, director of the Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action, said that in addition to the Plough grant, Safeways will receive $150,000 through the city's Gun Down plan. And apartments that join Project Safeways will commit $10,000 each to help maintain the project's basic budget.

Betts said new apartment complexes taking part in the project will be announced Thursday, bringing the total to 15 complexes. Using a rough average of 100 apartment units per complex, Betts said 300 apartment complexes eventually would make the project self-sustaining as a business model.

Ledbetter said the project adopted some of the best crime-fighting techniques tried by other cities, including a no-trespass model that began in the borough of Manhattan. It would make anyone with no legitimate business on a property subject to arrest for trespassing. In the Autumn Ridge complex, Ledbetter said the no-trespass rule led to the arrests of several people on outstanding warrants. Other crime-fighting tools include the use of license readers to spot cars that are not registered in an apartment complex and security cameras with online connections that give the Memphis Police Department ability to monitor real-time activity in a complex.

"It makes me proud to be a Memphian and know that we can create a model for apartment living safety nationwide. We believe the Memphis model will become the gold standard for how to operate property complexes nationwide," Ledbetter said. Part of his optimism, he said, is based on an 80 percent drop in violent crime at the Kensington Manor complex.

He called the overall approach "neighborhood watch on steroids" and said occupancy rates immediately begin to rise when crime goes down. In some instances, he said, residents who object to background checks or other crime-fighting measures choose to move elsewhere. For those who remain, he said, "It takes an apartment and makes it more like a home."

The Safeways model is a data-driven process similar to the Memphis Police Department's Operation Blue Crush. The strategy was developed by Betts and her husband, Dr. Richard Janikowski, at the University of Memphis. Both are preparing to retire, but Betts said they will continue to be consultants to Project Safeways. Betts said the first phase of the project has produced volumes of baseline data which will be used to help monitor performance of Safeways partners and apartment complexes that are not part of the project.